Matt Damon just played the most demanding role of his career, and fans want to know if the paycheck matched the effort as Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey asked a lot of its leading man.
Damon has been open about how brutal this shoot actually was, calling it the hardest movie he’s ever made. That includes a jacked physical transformation to play Odysseus, King of Ithaca, a role that puts him in nearly every scene of the film.
Nolan projects have a reputation for asking stars to take less upfront money in exchange for backend deals tied to box-office performance. Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, and Damon himself reportedly all took reduced $4 million paychecks for Oppenheimer under that same structure, a deal that paid off massively once the film crossed a billion dollars worldwide.
Matt Damon’s Reported ‘The Odyssey’ Paycheck
For The Odyssey, though, Damon didn’t take the discount. According to Patrick Bet-David, Damon’s upfront salary landed around $15 million, making him the highest-paid actor in Nolan’s ensemble by a wide margin. Universal hasn’t officially confirmed the figure, but it’s the number that’s circulated most consistently since the film’s release.
That puts Damon well ahead of his co-stars. Tom Holland, who plays Telemachus, reportedly earned around $10 million. Charlize Theron’s Calypso and Zendaya‘s Athena both landed in the $5 to $6 million range, while Anne Hathaway reportedly negotiated somewhere between $4 and $5 million to play Penelope.
Even at $15 million, it’s not actually Damon’s career high. Back in 2007, he pocketed $26 million for The Bourne Ultimatum, a number Vanity Fair once calculated at roughly $1 million per line of dialogue. Still, on a film with a reported $250 million production budget and a total marketing push that brings the overall cost to $375 million, Damon’s cut reflects just how central Odysseus is to the story Nolan is telling.
The Odyssey has already opened strong and has pulled in $700 million globally so far, so the backend potential Nolan built into the deal could still push Damon’s total payday even higher.